Fred's Book Club: The Great Man Speaks.

Good day, fine folks, and welcome back to the Humpback Writers, the book feature that falls on Wednesdays, known in some disreputable corners as Hump Day. The writers don't actually have humps, or at least we have not found any, and we've looked. And the subject of today's book was way too tall to have had any bend to the spine -- otherwise his legs might not have been long enough to reach the ground. His birthday is this Friday, February 12.

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America is a remarkable account of Lincoln's most famous speech, given at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. This book is the first Pulitzer Prize winner I've profiled, because an awful lot of books that win that prestigious prize are lousy, but not this one. Wills's account is a compelling and scholarly lesson in history and oration. It may seem that a speech of 272 words, like the famous address, would hardly remake an afternoon let alone a nation, but Wills makes his case with enormous detail and intriguing historical research.

The book's not long -- 189 pages with another 115 pages of backmatter in my edition -- but it packs a lot in. Wills's comparison of the Gettysburg Address to the orations of Pericles are startling, or were to me. You may admire Lincoln all day without guessing how steeped this autodidact of a president was in classical forms:

The compactness is not merely a matter of length. There is a suppression of particulars in the idealizing art of Lincoln, as in the Greek orations. This restraint produces the aesthetic paradox that makes these works oddly moving despite their impersonal air. The Greek orator does not refer to himself except as answering the city's ordinance. Most often, he uses the plural "we" (hemeis) of all the citizenry -- as Lincoln does. Nor are the Greek dead referred to by name (except in one late example). The fallen are usually just "these (men)" (hoide) -- as Lincoln speaks of "what they did here" or of "these dead." The Epitaphios, as Loraux puts it, is "an oration that ignores individuals." Restraint deepens passion by refusing to give it easy vent.

As Wills points out, Lincoln's address doesn't mention slavery, or even Gettysburg by name. There's no mention of the Confederacy or a reference to the enemy combatants.    

Part of the perfection of Lincoln's prose is his use of reversals, which sets a pattern of birth-death-rebirth. 

The survivors at Gettysburg draw life from death, as their forefathers had sown life in the earth of this continent. The survivors take "increased devotion," even though the fallen men gave "the last full measure of devotion." The increase is not only over what the survivors felt before; it is something that goes beyond the ultimate of what the fallen gave. 

It's a beautiful examination of Lincoln's text, which in subsequent chapters Wills shows in context of the "culture of death" throughout the West at the time. Later he makes his case that this address, more than any other Lincoln speech, sets the tone for a new federal-centered vision of the nation rather than the states-centered vision that led to this war. Here I suspect the liberal Wills oversells -- not that the Civil War did not lead to greater federal prominence, but that the address was of a piece with Lincoln's entire career, and can't carry the whole weight on its own.

For me, one of the best things about the book was its serious examination of a lot of myths about the speech. Lincoln did not wing it; he did not write it on the back of an envelope, or on the train from Washington. Lincoln worked hard on his remarks, and may have consulted Secretary of State William Seward on them the night before the ceremony. Seward had helped him with the First Inaugural. 

Further, the audience didn't get furious because Lincoln's speech was so short. Lincoln was not supposed to be the principal speaker of the day -- former secretary of state Edward Everett, president of Harvard, considered one of the finest speakers of the time, had that honor, and he spoke for more than two hours. I'd have been grateful if the next speaker was brief after that.

I was amazed to discover that Abraham Lincoln did not have a rich, earthy, sonorous voice like that of Almighty God, or at least Raymond Massey, as his height and mournful face would suggest. Actually:

Everett's voice was sweet and expertly moderated; Lincoln's was high to the point of shrillness, and his Kentucky accent offended some Eastern sensibilities. But Lincoln derived an advantage from his high tenor voice -- carrying power. If there is an agreement on any one aspect of Lincoln's delivery, at Gettysburg and elsewhere, it is his audibility. 

We'll end here with the Gettysburg Address itself, and let you read it through in honor of our great president's birthday this week. And as you do, remember that this is the man that is not considered good enough for the sneering jackals who run San Francisco's public schools.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow-- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.